Ghost Story (16 page)

"Oh, poor Edward. He doesn't have to worry about that girl. She's good as gold. You should see her. She's absolutely lovely. She looks better than she has all night."

"Well." He pushed himself out of the stiff chair. "Do you want help finding Edward?"

"No, no, no. You just carry on. I'll find him. I'll try the bedrooms. Though what he'd be doing there—"

"Still looking, I expect."

John wheeled around, muttering that he couldn't help but worry, and went back through the consulting rooms. Ricky slowly followed.

Harold Sims was dancing with Stella, holding her tightly and keeping up a steady stream of talk into her ear. The music was so loud that Ricky wanted to scream. Nobody but Sears had left, and the young people, many of them now drunk, whirled about, hair and arms flying. The little actress cavorted with the editor, Lewis was talking to Christina Barnes on the couch. Both were oblivious to the presence of sleeping Milly Sheehan, not eight inches away. Ricky wished profoundly that he were in his bed. The noise gave him a headache. His old friends, Sears excepted, seemed to have lost their minds. Lewis had his hand on Christina Barnes's knee, and his eyes were unfocused. Was he really trying to seduce his banker's wife? In the presence of her husband and son?

Upstairs, something heavy fell over, and only Ricky heard it. He went back out onto the landing and saw John Jaffrey standing at the top of the stairs.

"Ricky."

"What's wrong, John?"

"Edward. It's Edward."

"Did he knock something over?"

"Come up here, Ricky."

Ricky went up, growing a little more worried with each step. John Jaffrey seemed very shaken.

"Did he knock something over? Did he hurt himself?"

Jaffrey's mouth opened. Finally sounds emerged. "I knocked a chair over. I don't know what to do."

Ricky reached the landing and looked into Jaffrey's ruined face. "Where is he?"

"The second bedroom."

Since Jaffrey did not move, Ricky went across the hall to the second door. He looked back; Jaffrey nodded, swallowed and finally came toward him. "In there."

Ricky's mouth was dry. Wishing that he were anywhere else, doing anything but what he was doing, he put a hand on the doorknob and turned it. The door swung open.

The bedroom was cold, and almost bare. Two coats, Edward's and the girl's, were lain across an exposed mattress. But Ricky saw only Edward Wanderley. Edward was on the floor, both hands clutched to his chest and his knees drawn up. His face was terrible.

Ricky stepped back and nearly fell over the chair that John Jaffrey had overturned. There was no question that Edward was still alive—he did not know how he knew it, but he knew—yet he asked, "Did you try to feel his pulse?"

"He doesn't have a pulse. He's gone."

John was trembling just inside the door. Music, voices came up the stairwell.

Ricky forced himself to kneel by Edward's side. He touched one of the hands gripping Edward's green shirt He worked his fingers around to the underside of the wrist. He felt nothing, but he was no doctor. "What do you think happened?" He still could not look again at Edward's distorted face.

John came further into the room. "Heart attack?"

"Do you think that's what it was?"

"I don't know. Yes, probably. Too much excitement But—"

Ricky stared up at Jaffrey and took his hand from Edward's still warm hand. "But what?"

"I don't know. I can't say. But, Ricky, look at his face."

He looked: rigid muscles, mouth drawn open as if to yell, empty eyes. It was the face of a man being tortured, flayed alive. "Ricky," John said, "it's not a very medical thing to say, but he looks as if he was scared to death."

Ricky nodded and stood. That was just how Edward looked. "We can't let anyone come up here. I'll go down and phone for an ambulance."

Half an hour later, Edward's body was on its way to hospital or morgue. Ricky drove Stella home. "You didn't see her leave?" he asked.

"One minute she was dancing with Ned Rowles, the next minute she was out the door. I thought she was going to the bathroom. Ricky, how horrible."

"Yes. It was horrible."

"Poor Edward. I don't think I really believe it."

"I don't think I do either." Tears filled his eyes, and for some seconds he drove blindly, seeing only a streaky blur. To try to take the image of Edward's face from his mind, he asked, "What did she say to you that surprised you so much?"

"What? When? I barely spoke to her."

"In the middle of the party. I saw her talking to you, and I thought she said something that startled you."

"Oh."
Stella's voice rose. "She asked me if I was married. I said, 'I'm Mrs. Hawthorne.' And then she said, 'Oh, yes, I've just seen your husband. He looks like he'd be a good enemy.' "

"You couldn't have heard her correctly."

"I did."

"It doesn't make sense."

"That's what she said."

First about the town, then about the good doctor. My uncle's town, Milburn, is one of those places that seems to create its own limbo and then to nest down in it. Neither proper city nor proper country—too small for one, too cramped for the other, and too self-conscious about its status. (The local paper is called
The Urbanite.
Milburn even seems proud of its minuscule slum, the few streets called the Hollow, seems to point at it and say: See, we've got places where you want to be careful after dark, the age hasn't left us high and dry and innocent. This is almost comedy. If trouble ever comes to Milburn, it won't start in the Hollow.) Three-fourths of the men work somewhere else, in Binghamton mainly—the town depends on the freeway for its life. A feeling of being oddly settled, unmoving,
heavy,
and at the same time nervous. (I bet they gossip about one another endlessly.) Nervous because they'd feel that they were forever missing something—that the age after all has left them high and dry. Probably I feel this because of the contrast between here and California—this is a worry they don't have, there. It does seem a particularly
Northeast
kind of anxiety, peculiar to these little towns. Good places for Dr. Rabbitfoot.

(Speaking of anxiety, those three old men I met today—my uncle's friends—have it bad. Obviously has to do with whatever made them write to me, not knowing that I was getting so sick of California I'd have gone anywhere I thought I might be able to work.)

Physically, of course, it's pretty—all these places are. Even the Hollow has a kind of sepia thirties prettiness. There's the regulation town square, the regulation trees—maples, tamarack pines, oaks, the woods full of mossy deadfalls—a sense that the woods around the town are stronger,
deeper
than the little grid of streets people put in their midst. And when I came in I saw the big houses, some of them big enough to be called mansions.

But still ... it is wonderful, a heaven-sent setting for the Dr. Rabbitfoot novel.

He's black, definitely. He dresses gaudily, with old-fashioned pzazz: spats, big rings, a cane, a flashy waistcoat. He's chirpy, showbizzy, a marathon talker, slightly ominous—he's the bogeyman. He'll own you if you don't watch out. He'll get you seven ways to Sunday. He's got a killer smile.

You only see him at night, when you pass a piece of land normally deserted and there he is, standing on a platform outside his tent, twirling a cane while the jazz band plays. Lively music surrounds him, it whistles through his tight black hair, a saxophone curls his lips. He's looking straight at you. He invites you in to have a look at his show, to buy a bottle of his elixir for a dollar. He says he is the celebrated Dr. Rabbitfoot, and he's got just what your soul needs.

And what if what your soul needs is a bomb? A knife? A slow death?

Dr. Rabbitfoot gives you a big wink. You're
on,
man. Just pull a dollar out of your jeans.

Now to state what is obvious: Behind this figure I've been carting around in my head for years is Alma Mobley. It also suited her to give you what you wanted.

All the time, the capering smile, the floating hands, the eyes of bleached and dazzling white ... his sinister gaiety.
An' what about that little Alma Mobley, boy? Suppose you see her when you close your eyes, then what? Is she there, hee hee? Has you ever touched a ghost? Has you ever put your hand on a ghosts white skin? And yo' brutha's peaceful eyes—was they watchin' you?

Jaffrey, either? Oh, he was a dear, dear man, he must have been doctoring here in Milburn for forty years, he was the kindest man you ever saw, not sugary-sweet, you know, but when he put his hands on you, you just felt the kindness flowing out,
she rattled on, looking me over, inspecting me, trying to figure out just what the devil her boss wanted me for,
and then this old woman sitting at her switchboard locked him with an angry smile and slapped the trump card on the table,
she said of course you don't know, but he killed himself five days ago. He jumped off the bridge—can you imagine that? It was just tragic. Mr. James and Ricky Hawthorne were so upset. They still haven't gotten over it. Now that Anna girl is making them do twice as much work, and we've got that crazy Elmer Scales calling up every day, yelling at them about those four sheep of his ... what would make a nice man like Dr. Jaffrey do a thing like that, do you imagine?

(He listened to Dr. Rabbitfoot, lady.)

Oh, you'd like to go out to the cemetery?

The sign,
Pleasant Hill Cemetery,
was a length of stamped gray metal on one side of a black ironwork gate; if it had not been for the big gates standing at what looked like the entrance to just another hilly field, Don would have missed it. He looked at the gates as they came nearer, wondering what kind of farmer would be grandiose enough to stick up a baronial gate at his tractor path, slowed down, glanced up at the rising narrow road—more than a tractor path—and saw half a dozen cars parked at the top of the hill. Then he saw the little plate.
Just another field, but heavens what they planted there.
He swung his car through the gates.

Don left his car apart from the others, halfway up the hill, and walked to the top: nearest him was the oldest section of the cemetery, tilted slabs with pitted markings, stone angels lifting arms weighted with snow. Granite young women shielded their eyes with forearms hung with drapery. Thin skeletons of weeds mounted up the leaning slabs. The narrow road bisected the old section and led into a larger region of neat small headstones. Purple, gray and white, these were dwarfed by the expanse of land rolling out from them: after a moment, a hundred yards away, Don saw the fences surrounding the cemetery. A hearse was drawn up at the land's lowest point. The black-hatted driver cupped a cigarette so that it would not be seen by the little knot of people clustered around the newest grave. One woman shapeless in a pale blue coat clung to another, taller woman; the other mourners stood as straight and motionless as fenceposts.
When I saw the two old men standing together at the base of the grave, I knew they had to be the two lawyers—if they weren't lawyers they were from Central Casting. I started to come toward them down the slope of the narrow road. Then I thought, if the dead man was a doctor, why aren't there more people—where are his patients?
A silver-haired man beside the two lawyers saw him first and prodded the massive one who wore a black fur-collared coat with his elbow. The big one glanced up at him, and then the little man beside him, the one who looked as if he had a cold, also took his eyes from the minister and looked curiously at Don. Even the minister stopped talking for a moment, stuck one frozen hand in the pocket of his overcoat, and gaped at Don with rubber-faced confusion.

Then, finally, a sign of welcome, a contrast to this guarded examination: one of the beauties, the younger one (a daughter?), wafted toward him a small genuine smile.

The man with silver-white hair who looked to Don as though he should have been in the movies left the other two and sauntered toward Don. "Are you a friend of John's?" he whispered.

"My name is Don Wanderley," he whispered back. "I got a letter from a man named Sears James, and the receptionist in his office said I could find him out here."

"Hell, you even look a little like Edward." Lewis grabbed his bicep and squeezed. "Look, kid, we're having a rough time here, just hang in there and don't say anything until it's all over. You got a place to stay tonight?"

So I joined them, half-meeting, half-avoiding their glances. The woman in the pale blue coat sagged against the challenging-looking woman holding her up: her face worked and she wailed oh no oh no oh no. Crumpled colored tissues lay at her feet, lifting and scampering in the wind that cut into the hollow. Every now and then one of them shot away like a small pastel pheasant and caught in the mesh of the fence. By the time we left there were dozens of them there, flattened out against the wire.